It’s the final weekend to see “The Taming of the Shrew,” “King Lear” and Lauren Gunderson’s “The Book of Will” in the Grove at DeLaveaga, but an expanded five-production season is in the works for Santa Cruz Shakespeare next year.
City Life
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Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s stunning ambition: Company goes big with five productions in 2024
“Hamlet” — which co-artistic director Charles Pasternak calls “the world’s most famous play” — headlines next year’s season, with an announcement made Monday at the company’s DeLaveaga Park home. But the big news: five productions — the most ever by a company that can claim four decades of performance — and only two of them are Shakespeare’s. The works of Oscar Wilde, Tennessee Williams and Charles Dickens complete the 2024 playbill.
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Strauss to Star Wars and Rossini to Ravel, Santa Cruz Symphony fires up for 2023-24 season
Kicking off Sept. 23 at the Civic Auditorium and also playing at the Henry J. Mello Center in Watsonville, the Santa Cruz Symphony’s upcoming season promises variety.
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AfroLatine Festival set to make splash on Santa Cruz cultural scene
Celebrating the cultural heritage of the Latine and African cultural diasporas and put on by Mi Gente, the AfroLatine Festival comes Sept. 16 to Santa Cruz’s Woodhouse Blending & Brewing.
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Jewel, Ben Harper and more: Sol Festival is on the horizon
Roaring Camp will be the scene Sept. 15-17 for the Santa Cruz Mountain Sol Festival, where the big names include Jewel, Ben Harper and Burning Spear. And you can even take the train there from Santa Cruz.
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Remember to have fun: Lauren Crux and the life lessons of her new book, ‘Difficult Beauty’
Author, artist and psychotherapist Lauren Crux’s latest work is a collection of what she calls “rambles” — short impressions, crafted like poems and meant to be exchanged in the mail, like postcards. She’ll discuss “Difficult Beauty: Rambles, Rants and Intimate Conversations” next week at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
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‘She’s a connector’: How Isabel Contreras is building an emerging arts culture for local people of color
“A lot of young folks, they’re just trying to find their way in the world,” one Santa Cruz County arts leader says of 25-year-old Isabel Contreras, who has made a splash with both her art and her community organizing, “but they don’t usually take the kind of leadership that Isabel has taken on. It’s very unusual.”
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What will Cabrillo College renaming mean for arts organizations that share the name?
As Cabrillo College navigates the process of changing its name, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and Cabrillo Stage are keeping an eye on developments. Though it’s not tied to the college, the music festival is “committed to a thoughtful and thorough process for evaluating our name,” while the musical-theater company appears headed for a name change of its own.
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Laughternoon delight: Comedy impresario DNA bringing stand-up series downtown
Comic Amy Miller headlines the first of three Saturday afternoon shows on an outdoor stage at London Nelson Community Center in downtown Santa Cruz. Laughternoon kicks off Aug. 26.
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Improved audience numbers buoy Cabrillo Stage in first season under new leadership
“Compared to the last post-COVID audience numbers, we’re still increasing,” artistic director Andrea L. Hart says after wrapping up her first season at the helm of musical-theater company Cabrillo Stage. No word yet on 2024, but Hart has her eye on “things that feel magical.”